This short paper briefly looks at Balangay and how it was developed as a useful application of digital technology to address a specific governance problem of Legazpi City. It also examines the challenges that Legazpiitfaces in enabling strategic collective action to promote responsive and accountable governance.

In a nutshell, Balangay is a cloud-based information system that aims to provide “prompt, reliable and understandable information” regarding various natural disasters that may threaten the Legazpi City, such as typhoons, flooding, landslides, earthquakes,and volcanic eruptions. It comes in the form of a web and mobile app that is meant to help prepare the City’s residents for any possible calamity.

How can ordinary citizens pressure local officialstorespond to their demands? The people from the province of North Cotabato in Mindanao seemsto have found a solution and areisattempting to further enhance it.

This case is about how an organization attempts a strategic shift: from pressure/ protest-only approach to employing an integrated approach: pressure politics and constructive engagement. This case investigates what the enabling factors were of such a strategic shift and the challenges involved in going through with it. Since the strategic shift also involved the use of digital technology as facilitated by a global program (Making All Voices Count), the case also reflects on when and how digital technology worked (in this case, did not work) to support the work of an organization.

"In anticipation of the 2016 election, the third Philippine action plan sought to institutionalize existing OGP participatory mechanisms and largely continued expanding the scope of activities from previous action plans. While general awareness of OGP remains low, the passage on an Executive Order on Freedom of Information and inclusion of new commitments on improving public service delivery indicates sustained energy on areas with immediate impact on citizens’ lives."

Have we come to a point when even those who were once reform elements in the "truncated procedural democracy" have become integrated (accustomed, immersed, assimilated) in the system over time that they behave predictably in harmony with the system even when the system is already showing its decay, malfunctioning and total ineptitude?

The Philippines has a long history of state–society engagement to introduce reforms in government and politics. Forces from civil society and social movements have interfaced with reform-oriented leaders in government on a range of social accountability initiatives – to make governance more responsive, to introduce policy reforms, and to make government more accountable.

On November 18 at 12:00 noon, Ferdinand Marcos, the late dictator who ruled the Philippines with impunity for 14 years was buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. It was a discreet burial kept hidden from the public until it was done. Protest actions took place all over Metro Manila culminating in a protest action at the People Power Monument in EDSA until the wee hours of the following day. Until now, social media are filled with memes and posts protesting the burial, 'educating' the public about the horrors of Martial Law and criticizing the Marcoses and Duterte for the burial that came like a "thief in the night."

This piece puts forward propositions on "doing accountability differently" through strategies that tackle power and systemic issues in order to address root causes (instead of just the symptoms) of corruption and bad governance through balanced and synergistic, multi-level and multi-actor actions on transparency, participation and accountability.

This provides background paper for a learning event on transforming governance, which presents vertical integration as “an effective way of doing accountability work because it can reveal more clearly where the main problems are, permitting more precisely targeted civil society advocacy strategies.”

In June 2015, a North-South convergence of four organizations hosted a workshop entitled “scaling accountability.” In contrast to the conventional idea of “scaling” as involving the replication of local pilots, our use of the term was intended to convey the idea of going beyond bounded projects to address systemic accountability problems.

This study explores whether and how Philippine open government reformers have been able to leverage the Open Government Partnership (OGP) mechanisms, processes, spaces, and assistance to improve government responsiveness and accountability.

A book chapter that discusses one of the challenges to Philippine democracy – poorly regulated campaign finance – highlighting the importance of making elections inclusive and democratic by making them competitive and fair.